Emma Silver Mine In Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah
Index For This Page
This page was last updated on July 25, 2025.
Trenor W. Park
From Trenor W. Park's obituary..."As a speculator he was known as a sharp, active, and acute buyer and manipulator, whose operations were so clevery and quickly made that he was generally out of the market before the operators knew he was in it. The purchase of the Emma Mine and its sale to English capitalists in conjunction with Gen. Robery C. Schenck, then Minister to England, for $10,000,000 (sic: $5,000,000), was an operation which brought him int an unenviable nototiety and involved him in litigation on both sides of the ocean, extending over a period of several years. His friends assert that he repurchased the property and held it to the time of his death." (New York Times, December 21, 1882)
Excerpts from "The Story of a Country Bank, 1864 - 1954"
(With empasis on Trenor W. Park.)
"The Story of a Country Bank, 1864 - 1954" by Bradford Smith
The First National Bank Of North Bennington, Vermont
Although the Frist National Bank of North Bennington is a thorough going Vermont institution, its tap roots reach out to California. The story of the bank is also the story of three families.
In 1851 Hiland Hall of North Bennington was appointed chairman of a federal Land Commission to adjust claims to land in California under the treaty with Mexico. At the time when President Millard Fillmore made this appointment, Hall had already served his state and nation with distinction. Now fifty-six years old, he had been town representative, state’s attorney, Member of Congress, state bank commissioner and judge of the Supreme Court of Vermont. In 1850 he became second comptroller of the Treasury in Washington.
Both in Congress and in the Treasury he had shown himself a capable watchdog and guardian of the public interest. In Congress he had exposed fraudulent claims for Revolutionary services which saved the government several million dollars and put an end to this drain on the public funds. As comptroller, he had refused to pay out sums which in his opinion were not justified, even though he came in conflict with his superiors. Perhaps it was this trait which recommended him to President Fillmore.
In 1851 he sailed for San Francisco by way of Panama with his sons Hiland and John and Hiland's young wife. Young Hiland died of Panama fever before reaching San Francisco, and his father was not expected to live when he was carried off the ship. As soon as he was well enough to begin his work, Hiland Hall decided that it would take him several years to complete it. He therefore made the long trip back home to get his wife. His son John and the young widow went with him.
Back in Bennington, he urged his son-in-law, Trenor W. Park, to join him on the return trip to California. He was convinced that the new state was bursting with opportunities for an energetic young lawyer.
Trenor W. Park was a successful lawyer in North Bennington, Vermont, until his father-in-law urged him to head west to San Francisco as part of a larger family group. In San Francisco, Park became a successful lawyer, especially with land matters as he assisted his father-in-law, Hiland Hall who was chairman of a federal Land Commission to adjust claims to land in California under the treaty with Mexico.
Trenor Park had demonstrated his energies at an early age. Though he had never been able to complete a full year of school at any time in his life, young Trenor (born in 1823) managed to educate himself. As a youngster he sold molasses candy and carried letters from Bennington up the hill to Bennington Centre (Old Bennington) to help feed the family. At fifteen he owned and operated a candy store on North Street. A year later he somehow managed to enter the law office of A. P. Lyman and was admitted to the bar as soon as he came of age. In 1846 he married Laura, the daughter of Hiland Hall. Two years later their first child, Elisa Hall, was born.
When Hiland Hall proposed the move to California, Trenor was established in a good law practice in Bennington. He was still helping to support his father’s family. The long trip to California - by ship to Panama, across the isthmus by mule back and then on by another steamer - was full of discomforts and even of real danger, as the death of young Hiland had proved. The rough, frontier town of San Francisco was full of still other perils, with no guarantee that a young lawyer would be able to support his family.
Yet Trenor and his wife Laura decided to take the chance. In the spring of 1852 the Hall-Park family group started west. This time there were eight of them, Hiland Hall and his wife, Trenor Park with his wife and three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Elisa, John Hall, young Hiland’s widow and a young man named Charles Lincoln who had been studying in Trenor Park’s law office.
The party sailed from New York in a crowded, dirty little steamer which tossed and rolled until most of the passengers were too sick to eat the miserable food. Then came the exciting trip of forty miles or so on mules through the lush tropical foliage of Panama, with brilliant colored birds flashing through the trees and monkeys screeching and chattering from the high branches. At last, after a stop at Acapulco in Mexico, the Pacific voyage ended in the beautiful harbor of San Francisco.
The first madness of the gold rush was over, but San Francisco was still a frontier community. Churches, schools, theaters and a library had already been established, though they were far outnumbered by the saloons and gambling houses. Fire had several times swept through the city, which was now being rebuilt with brick and stone. A government had been established, but it was at the mercy of the crooks and gamblers until in 1851 a Vigilance Committee of the respectable citizens had formed to combat lawlessness. They managed to clean things up for a while, though Trenor Park was later to help do it over again.
Into this strange community came the family group from Vermont. Young Elisa loved it, because there were so few children that homesick fathers showered her with toys while often a strange man in the street would catch her up and give her a kiss with tears in his eyes.
Trenor Park opened a law office at once. He soon had plenty to do. The family connection with the chairman of the Land Commission was no doubt an advantage. He was soon doing a large share of the business created by the controversies over land titles. James A. McDougall, himself an eminent lawyer, called Park "the most skillful jury lawyer on the coast." As his reputation grew, more and more clients demanded his services. One of these retained him in order, as Park later found out, to keep the other side from getting him. It soon became apparent to Trenor Park that he was on the wrong side of the case. When the judge, apparently confused by the ins and outs of the case, asked Park to get up and "state the facts," Park did so. He did it so honestly and so well that the other side won!
The outstanding legal firm in San Francisco at the time was that of Halleck, Peachy and Billings - the same Halleck who was later to become President Lincoln’s wartime adviser. The firm invited Park to join them, adding his name to theirs.
In 1854 President Pierce appointed a new Land Commission, but Hiland Hall remained in California for a time to assist his son-in-law’s firm. Then he returned with his wife to Bennington.
Trenor Park’s activities continued to broaden. In 1854 he proved that the city treasurer had fraudulently secreted official papers and records. The treasurer challenged him to a duel, a summons which Park ignored. A few months later he was knocked down in the street by another adversary. Physically small, Trenor Park was at the mercy of the toughs who infested San Francisco. Yet he fearlessly took a prominent part in the work of the Vigilance Committee.
In 1857 the Parks made the long trip home to Vermont for a visit. But Trenor Park’s many interests soon took his family back west. In addition to his legal work on the land claims, Park was counsel for Alvin Adams, president of the famous Adams Express Company, and was also profiting handsomely from real estate transactions. But the activity which did more than anything else to build up the fortune on which the North Bennington Bank was to be founded was Park’s management of John C. Fremont’s fabulous Mariposa estate.
Fremont, the explorer and conqueror of California, had acquired a vast domain on which gold was subsequently discovered. A poor business man, he had failed to operate the estate efficiently and had borrowed large sums from Trenor Park. To recover his money, Trenor Park took over the management of the estate and in 1861 moved his family to Bear Valley in Mariposa County. It was Hiland Hall, incidentally, who as Land Commissioner had written the opinion on Fremont's Mariposa claim. This opinion dealt with most of the important legal issues involved in the claims awaiting the Commission and thus had served as a guide to all later decisions.
In 1863 the Mariposa estate was offered for sale. Trenor Park, who held a mortgage covering one-eighth interest, proposed to give possession if his accounts were cleared for $1,400,000. A company was organized and took over the estate at a valuation of $10,000,000. In the fall of 1863, therefore, Trenor Park returned with his family to North Bennington, a wealthy man.
There he bought the Hall Farm from Hiland Hall who had served two terms as governor of Vermont (1858-1860) while the Parks were in California. Trenor Park soon began building for his family the big house on the corner where Mrs. Elmer H. Johnson, his granddaughter, now lives.
He also began immediately to plan for the establishment of a bank in North Bennington.
As a means of financing the Civil War, then at its height, Congress had established a national banking system which required national banks to have one third of their capital invested in United States securities. It was no doubt with this legislation in mind that Trenor Park invited a group of influential townspeople to meet in Hiland Hall's office on January 5, 1864. The groundwork must have been well laid, for on the same day the organization meeting, with Hiland Hall in the chair, elected Trenor Park President, Charles G. Lincoln Cashier, and seven men as a Board of Directors - Hiland Hall, Jonathan C. Houghton, Charles E. Houghton, Daniel McEowen, Calvin Park (a cousin), Trenor W. Park, and Charles Thatcher, Jr.
Also on the same day the stockholders met in Hiland Hall's office and voted to pay in fifty per cent of the capital stock which was to total $400,000. Of the four thousand shares issued, Hiland Hall held 100, Charles E. Houghton 50, Jonathan C. Houghton 20, Calvin Park 50, Daniel McEowen 25, Charles Thatcher 40, Charles E. Welling 40 and Trenor Park the remaining 3675.
Approval of the bank was prompt, for on January 13, 1864 the Comptroller of the Currency issued his authorization.
Trenor Park was at this time at the height of his powers. Though small in stature, he had a handsome, bold, commanding face with a prominent brow and an intense look suggesting vast stores of mental energy and driving force. Building a mansion and a bank were not enough to occupy him. He was soon to involve himself in politics - he served four terms in the legislature, from 1865 to 1868, and in a number of railroad and banking activities.
Whether North Bennington would ever have had a bank without Trenor Park is a matter of conjecture. The banking act had stimulated the founding of new institutions. Just the year before, Bennington had established its National Bank with a capital of $110,000. Places as small as Wilmington were following suit. But it is certain that no bank in North Bennington or anywhere else in Vermont would have been capitalized at half a million without Trenor Park.
North Bennington in 1864 was a thriving village, with more businesses going forward than it has today. The railroad had been operating for a dozen years, its wood-burning engines consuming mountains of fuel that was stocked where the freight house now stands. There were two cotton factories, a paper mill and an iron washing works, all profiting from the wartime boom. Along Main Street or nearby were a cabinet shop, a carriage shop, a tin shop, a carpenter shop, a tailor and shoe shop, a factory for making squares. The stores included Hawkes & Loomis, Thatcher & Welling, the Union Store, a store and post office, another tailor shop, an apothecary's and the Paran Creek House. There was one church - the Baptist - and ten saloons.
On February 18, the Bennington Banner reported that the First National Bank of Bennington had commenced business. Though the North Bennington Bank had as yet no building, it had actually commenced business too.
But plans for the building were well along. A Troy architect had been engaged. He designed a brick building which was to be "the size of C. E. Houghton's store." But in May the directors enlarged the plan. Now the building was to be sixty by forty feet, with a public hall on the second floor.
[After entering the banking business, Trenor W. Park tried investing in railroads, with only limited success.]
He recovered some of his losses through his controlling interest in the famous Emma mine of Utah, though at the cost of some litigation and unpleasantness. Later he was interested in the Pacific Mail Steamship lines. Then he bought a controlling interest in the Panama Railroad, which he served as president from 1875 until his death in 1882. In this venture he had the help of his son-in-law, John G. McCullough.
It was natural that John G. McCullough should become a director of the bank, which he did in 1873. As vice president of the Panama Railroad he helped his father-in-law to manage it, and to raise the value of its stock from below par to $300 a share. By maintaining high freight and passenger rates on the shipment of material and workmen of the Panama Canal which was then being built (this was the earlier, De Lesseps canal), they were able to persuade the Canal Company to buy out the railroad, though remaining as officers.
The sale took place in 1881. The next year Trenor Park, worn out with overwork, sailed for the Pacific on the San Blas. His wife had died in 1875, but his faithful friend Charley Lincoln was with him. One morning he stayed very late in bed. He had suffered a stroke of paralysis, and never regained consciousness.
Trenor Park's funeral in New York was attended by many of the great political and financial personalities, and among his pallbearers was Leland Stanford.
Trenor W. Park was president of the First National Rank Of North Bennington from 1864 until his death in 1882.
Charles G. Lincoln was cashier at the First National Rank Of North Bennington from 1864 until he resigned in 1873, but remained as a director until 1884.
###